Financing social and cohesion policy in an enlarged EU: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?

The development of the Open Method of Coordination, agreement on the Lisbon Agenda and EU enlargement offered the prospect of a new and substantial EU social policy agenda. This article considers EU social and cohesion policies in the context of the recent negotiation of the EU budget for 2007—13. We find the Commission's wish to redistribute EU spending in favour of these policy areas and new member states was thwarted by key political features of EU budget making: CAP spending levels which are downwardly sticky; institutional arrangements which provide for budget making as, at best, a zero-sum game; and the preferences of contributor member states in the EU-15 to contain overall spending while preserving their net budget positions. Questions are thus raised as to the ability of the EU to make any progress, from a budgetary perspective, on the social and cohesion policy agenda in an enlarged EU

Regulating working families in the European Union: a history of disjointed strategies

Families in market economies worldwide have long been confronted with the demands of participating in paid work and providing care for their dependent members. The social, economic and political contexts within which families do so differ from country to country but an increasing number of governments are being asked to engage, or better engage, with this important area of public policy. What seems like a relatively simple goal – to enable families to better balance care-giving and paid employment – has raised several difficulties and dilemmas for policy makers which have been approached in different ways. This paper aims to identify and critique the nature and development of the means by which legal engagement with work-family reconciliation has, historically, been framed in the European Union. In doing so, and with reference to specific cohorts of workers, we demonstrate how disjointed the strategies are in relation to working carers and argue that the EU is unlikely to provide the legal framework necessary to bring about effective change in this fundamentally important area of social policy

Landscape Transformations in Rapidly Developing Peri-urban Areas of Accra, Ghana: Results of 30 years

Beyond the loss of peri-urban agricultural and forested land as a result of built-up expansion, not much information exists on the changes in the structure of the peri-urban landscape in Ghana. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which urban expansion is driving changes in landscape structure of the peri-urban fringes of Accra. We submit that rapid peri-urbanisation will fragment the existing agricultural and forested landscape with consequent ecological, socio-economic and urban governance implications. Using Landsat satellite images for the years 1985, 1991, 2002 and 2015 the study area was classified into four land cover classes. The study adopted the use of Urban Intensity Index (UII) and the Annual Rate of Urbanization (R) as measures of urbanization. Edge density (ED), largest patch index (LPI) and Aggregation index (AI) were used as proxies to measure landscape structural transformations. The study reveals substantial reductions and fragmentation in agricultural lands, riverine and open forests, while there has been over 200 percent increase in built-up areas. Beyond these revelations in spatiotemporal changes in landscape structure, the paper points to the ecological implications of the changes, and three key socio-economic and urban governance implications

A Uni-Axial Test Rig Design Approach for Deformation Analysis of Flexible Parts Due to Location Type Tolerance in Assembly

Previous investigations attempting to establish the relationships between dimensional tolerance and product function have been limited to specific applications such as linkage design and industrial crank rockers. The techniques proposed cannot be extended to other complex parts and assemblies as a generalized tool. In particular little attention has been focused on the effect of tolerance on flexible parts. Present research provides a methodology in which test rigs could be designed and constructed for carrying out experimental investigations on the deformation of flexible part materials prior to manufacturing of the prototype parts. A Uni-Axial test is designed and manufactured to carry out experimental investigations on ABS plastics material used for manufacturing of automotive interior parts. The investigation provides a methodology to observe the influence of location tolerance on the deformation of a rectangular strip